I understand the objection to the term 'arbitrary', but ultimately think it is probably the best term we have.
Some thoughts:
Only characterizing the phenomenon of being 'received', while a true description, obscures the point being made in noting the arbitrariness of
particular musical practices.
That would be true if the practices were actually arbitrary. Also I didn't mean to suggest that "received" was the one and only characteristic of
phrases that do not seem to fit the official description, which itself is also received once some time has elapsed after the time the phrases first
were created or emerged. Perhaps i should not have emphasized how it came to be but simply said *that* it came to be.
The actual sound and melodic quality of these phrases suggests that Not Just Any Old Phrase could have been there instead. For instance 9 E double
flats in rapid succession followed by a slide from somewhere higher than C sharp all the way down to the open A string would be just as good as the
real phrase under discussion if the real phrase was really arbitrary. "Arbitrary" suggests that Musicality is an illusion and that one phrase is as
good or bad as the next.
The fact that the term 'arbitrary' engenders discussions such as this seems to me to be a positive feature, as the belief in 'reasons' determining
musical practices is a particularly widespread and frequently unhelpful starting point.
I think I disagree. There is usually one reason: an influential musician sang or played that phrase and it was copied and retained by others.
'Arbitrariness' is a bold and surprising claim on its face and forces a reckoning with implicit beliefs about how musical styles/genres come to
exist.
Even in your statement below, the need to be more careful about implicit beliefs is present:
"these patterns or phrases or sequences are . . . culturally determined, or 'received', and ultimately derived from aesthetic reasons rather than
stemming from a set of rules or prescriptions."
Arguably, saying that the sequences are derived from aesthetic reasons is at least potentially misleading.
One could make a pretty strong case that the aesthetics are derived from the sequences and not the other way around.
The notion that there is a cause and effect relationship between "reasons" and "practices" is one of the underlying assumptions that I think is being
challenged.
Point taken. i agree with that.
It's not just a distrust of prescriptive rules, but a fundamental skepticism toward the idea that musical practices are generated from general to
specific.
I don't understand the above sentence. *What* is not just a distrust of etc"?
Ultimately, these choices are collective aesthetic agreements that occur between many people over time within a particular cultural context — they
are created via a kind of generative feedback loop where there are not separate causes and effects but rather the specific interactions between
specific people in a specific time and place.
I agree. But I see nothing arbitrary about that process.
The exact specific operations of the universe that led to those people interacting in that way at that time in that place—it's not only random, but
wildly improbable as a particular occurrence. In this sense, it really is totally arbitrary that any practice exists in the way it does.
I don't see it as either random or improbable. I'll try to succinctly explain what I mean. To do that (sigh) I must digress. I remember Gen'ichi
Tsuge's explanation in the 1960s about the difference between Iraqi maqam and neighboring musics to both east and west. He said (this is a close
paraphrase): Iraqi maqam sounds Iraqi. Music in Cairo sounds Egyptian. Dastgah music sounds Persian". Context made it clear what he meant. Applying
this meaning to our current conversation I'll go out on a limb and suggest that if the interaction you have mentioned took place in a different
cultural/geographic setting the result would be predictably different in the sense that it would sound Iraqi or Eqyptian or Persian etc. Each existing
musical culture, even though each evolves and changes (someone might argue that Tunisian Malouf is unchanging but that is for a different
conversation), does have parameters and characteristics that are discernible during time periods, some of which are longer or shorter than other
periods.
Saying that cultural practices can be passed down and received doesn't really distinguish between the notions specific -> general vs. general ->
specific. The first is a bottom-up approach that fits the traditional models of learning by real musical examples, the second is a top-down approach
the fits more 'modern' models of theory-centered explanations. A theoretical approach is no less culturally 'received' for being theoretical.
Agreed. Where does the notion of "arbitrary" enter that observation?
I've noticed this is true of jazz, and interestingly as the theory approach became more used, the music that was being made evolved in some ways to
match, creating a feedback loop. In this way, it really becomes difficult to untangle cause and effect when we discuss how musical practices arise.
This is true
When I first began having these discussions with Sami a number of years ago, I too had similar objections regarding the associations of arbitrariness
with randomness, chaos and whim. After some discussion and reflection, I came around to the idea that there is something important here and that it's
worth holding space for a more nuanced sense of the word in order to highlight these kinds of issues and prompt this kind of discussion. Perhaps
there is a better word for it, but I'm not sure what it is.
Let's create a new word! :-)
In my own study and practice, I've found that 'rules' can almost always be better understood as a way to direct one's listening and observation.
I.e., the point of a 'rule' is to direct your attention to a tendency or phenomenon so that you can practice listening for it and noticing it (or its
absence or converse).
Real musical 'rules' are only expressible in music. They are too complex to be fully understood except via implicit reference to a large body of
stored musical memory. When expressed in words, they are only vague approximations. This is why the rules are just pointers for what to listen to —
once you're aware that there is a 'rule', the real work is to dive into the actual music and start learning the sound of as many examples of that
phenomenon as possible. It's also helpful to learn the sound of the rule being violated, as this can clarify what is being gained or lost by
following the rule.
While rules can be used generatively, this is a kind of brute-force and non-musical application (in the sense that it doesn't arise from your musical
imagination, but rather from some abstract notion). Although this can generate interesting and musical results! Particularly when you invent your own
rules or experiment with specific ways to bend or otherwise modify existing rules.
I don't mean to suggest that intellectual/theoretical approaches don't have value, just making a distinction between subjectively musical processes
and non-musical processes. For instance, you can use a 12-sided die to generate melodic material randomly. This can be (and has been) used to create
effective music, but it is not "musical" as a process.
A last thought - in my experience people who are "naturally gifted" in music typically tend to automatically gravitate toward the kind of direct
experiential understanding that is at the root of these distinctions (i.e., they learn music through "musical" processes). If you're this kind of
person, this kind of discussion might seem to be splitting hairs or have no bearing on how you learn - because it probably doesn't.
But a lot of people depend on non-musical methods (i.e., "intellectual" processes) to a large extent learn music. While this is not
ideal in the long run, you have to meet people where they are and work with their existing strengths. So a lot of this discussion could perhaps be
understood to exist in the light of "how can people who tend to intellectualize music be guided towards musical/experiential models of understanding?"
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I was wondering about this makam
also..
